Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 75
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
Tim Talks - A Real
Conversation (p. 171)
I read
BJ’s letter dialogue with Tim. It is the first time I read through a whole
chapter before responding to anything. It was sad to read how Tim was trying to
grapple honestly with Scripture to let the word of Christ dwell in him richly
so he would know how to admonish BJ! But sadly, BJ kept giving reasons why
God’s word can’t be trusted (of the “Did God actually say…?” variety), and so
the authority of God’s word was replaced by the authority of the BJs.
The
bottom line is that, first, we either agree with Jesus who endorsed the
Scriptures without correcting any of them, or we agree with BJ that the
Scriptures need correcting. I showed earlier that he totally misrepresented
what Jesus was correcting in the Sermon on the Mount (the teachings of the religious
leaders, not any teaching from Scripture). So, at this point in the book, he
has not presented one Scripture of Jesus correcting the Hebrew Scriptures even
though that is the foundation of his poison-in-the-pudding message.
Second, we either agree with Paul who said those Scriptures were
breathed out by God, or we agree with BJ that those Scriptures are a God/man
hybrid that needs correcting. We have yet to see any Scriptures in the New
Testament that support this notion of correcting Scriptures from the Old
Testament.
Thirdly, we either agree with Peter who said those men did not write by
their own wills, but were carried along by the Holy Spirit to write down what
they were given, or we let BJ tell us how he has rewritten those Scriptures to
match his “another Jesus”. BJ showed us what it looks like to twist and distort
what is written to make a god in his own image. Those who believe the Bible is
the breathed-out words of God go looking to understand what God was saying,
meaning, and doing in what he has given us in his word. Those who do not
believe the Bible, or want others to not believe the Bible, twist and distort
what is written to convince people that God didn’t actually say what he said.
Because I have had time to do the reading and consider responding, my
grief is growing for the Tims who have bought what the BJs are peddling when
the Old Testament Scriptures are full of the love of God for his people,
including welcoming any foreigners who wanted to serve Yahweh under the first
covenant. Despite the BJs’ attempt to smear Yahweh’s character for holding his
people to the terms of their covenant, there is nothing to be ashamed of in
watching how God literally did everything he could to save his people from the
curses of their rebellion. And, when we look into the background of the nations
God acted to destroy, they were generation after generation of evil and wicked
people doing the most evil and wicked things to other nations, and even to
their own people, particularly their own children.
My
contention is that there are far more reasons to trust the authority of
Scripture to teach us, reprove us, correct us, and train us in righteousness,
than to trust the deception coming from the BJs to lead people away from the
words breathed out by God. And I am now praying for Tim to get back to his
questions and let God speak through his word for the glory of God and the good
of his people.
Chapter
14 – A Grand Polyphony: One Story, Two Revelations, Four voices (p. 188).
This is so full of BJ’s opinions that I had to read half-a-dozen pages before I
came to a Scripture verse that could be examined. I will just say that BJ
continues to state opinions like he knows things when he is just reading them
in. I say this particularly about the idea that he has such a grasp of God’s
love that he has the authority to rule out God’s justice. So, unfortunately, I
will again need to stop and address the prejudicial expressions BJ uses that
don’t have authority, but they are intended to sway the judge’s thoughts on the
matter nonetheless.
Here’s
the thing: if you want to sway my thinking about what I believe about
Scripture, show me in Scripture. Show me anywhere Jesus corrected the very
Scriptures BJ claims are so abhorrent. The only time BJ made such a claim, he
was dishonest about what Jesus was talking about!
So now
I’m reading all these imaginations of who said this, who said that, how BJ
discerns things that aren’t actually written, how that compares (or more likely
contrasts) with what Jesus, Paul, and Peter stated about the Scriptures, and
how it all adds up to mind-blowing conclusions that… still… aren’t… coming…
from… SCRIPTURE!
Okay,
now, let’s look at BJ’s claims about the Scripture he shared.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“The Bible tells Israel’s faith story – the voices must be
distinguished” (p. 204). |
Let’s just keep in mind that Jesus never distinguished voices when he
used Scripture, never said there were voices, never treated Scripture like
the Jews had something faulty. And let’s keep in mind that Paul said that “all Scripture” was
breathed-out by God. Wouldn’t that make God’s voice the only one we needed to
be sure we were hearing (not BJ’s)? And Peter said that no Scripture included the voice of the will of man
but was written down by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit, which
would mean that was the Spirit’s voice, right? |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“For example, when we read the psalmist’s blessing on infanticide in
Psalm 137:9, no sane person who has experienced the Father’s love honestly
believes this is a revelation of God’s will” (p. 204). |
This is NOT anyone’s blessing on infanticide. That is such an
inflammatory statement. It is the cry for justice against a nation that had
brutalized God’s people in ways that left the Jews traumatized with the
ordeal and longing for God’s vengeance to be carried out on their
“tormentors”. I continue to hold Jesus, Paul, and Peter up against the BJs because
what these three said about the Scriptures is in direct conflict with what BJ
keeps claiming from the annals of his imagination. |
Note:
I want to finish skimming BJ’s chapter, but I will come back to Psalm 137:9 in
the next day’s journal journey and let other commentators explain it better
than BJ or me. In my journey through BJ’s book, I am simply pointing out who is
the authority to what he says. So far, the misuse of Scripture in the first
half, and the almost-absence of Scripture in the second makes it clear that
people are being duped out of meditating on the word of God because the BJs are
telling them things that we can’t find validated in the Scriptures themselves.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“We know instinctively that we have here a revelation of the
psalmist’s real but misguided demand for justice” (p. 204). |
No, “we” do NOT know this. No, our “instinctively” cannot be trusted because there are too many
variables that precondition us to what feels instinctive. No, there is nothing in Scripture that critiques this as “misguided”. And yes, it is a cry “for justice”, something the BJs have an
instinctive and prejudicial distaste for! |
Note: isn’t it significant that before BJ tried
to make all these unfounded applications of his poison-in-the-pudding teachings
he had to twist and distort the Scripture that says, “The heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
so that it somehow doesn’t mean that people’s “instinctive” response to Scripture
could be from a heart that is so deceitful and sick that they need to come to
the Lord Jesus Christ, be given a new heart and spirit, so they can understand
all the good things we have been given in Jesus Christ our Lord.
However, the fact is that what is taught in the
New Testament regarding “the flesh” affirms that,
"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 'For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ" (I Corinthians 2:14-16).
I only say this to show that we ought not to
trust the instincts of someone who thinks the things of the Spirit of God are “folly
to him”.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“I’m bewildered, then, when the same spiritual instinct doesn’t kick
in as we read ‘God’s command’ to prophets, judges, and kings that they should
eradicate their Canaanite neighbors” (p. 204). |
Your ”I’m bewildered” could have sent you searching the Scriptures to
find out what they were saying to you, not telling them that you had
authority to change them to match your personal preferences. The ”same spiritual instinct” is suspect now as it was in the previous
comment. And we are back to what the Scriptures say about God’s commands
regarding dealing with enemy and criminal nations, not how BJ adds his “Did
God actually say…?” to the mix. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“What makes us need to defend divine provocations to merciless
death-dealing as ‘the Word of the Lord’?” (P. 204). |
We don’t need to defend Yahweh from what he really said and why he was
really doing what he said to do. But we do need to make sure we understand
him, his will, and his ways. “Merciless” is one of those prejudicial editorial notes that, again,
are not found in the text, but imposed by the BJs who do not like the
dangerous side of God’s justice. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Why can’t we see the human urge to spiritualize vengeance in those
passages as naturally as we do with the psalmist?” (pp. 204-5) |
What if the writer then, and readers who believe Scripture was
breathed out by God now, agree with God’s word that “Beloved, never avenge
yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance
is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19). For further study, here is a link from www.biblegateway.com looking up the word “vengeance”.[1] It gives so many Scriptures revealing God as the one who has every
right to inflict vengeance on those who hate him. In fact… (drum roll please)… while the BJs keep insisting that Yahweh
is not Christlike enough for Jesus, look at how clearly the Scriptures
present Jesus as just as avenging as his Father! Paul wrote that Jesus will come “in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance
on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our
Lord Jesus” (II Thessalonians 1:8). I will elaborate on that in my next day’s journal journey as I look at
Psalm 137:9 in more detail. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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After trying to explain how the writers could get it wrong about
Yahweh and still be “revelation”, he claims, “But when the text runs counter
to the voice of the Lamb, it is revealing religion’s idea of God, not Jesus’s
revelation of the Father” (p. 206). |
Okay, such a big pile of bogusness here! First, who says that what any of the Old Testament writers wrote “runs
counter to the voice of the Lamb”? In the Lamb’s voice, where does Jesus say
that any of them wrote something wrong about his Father? He was quite willing
to correct the false teachings of the religious elite, but he did not once
correct anything from the Scriptures. So whose voice is speaking here? Isn’t
this called hearsay, when someone claims someone said something but have no
proof they actually did?! And why don’t we put this back on the BJs that THEY are the ones who
use their books, novels, and pseudo-scriptures to reveal their “religion’s
idea of God”? Everything I read in this book, and accidentally read in the
other book, and heard the proponents of this religion say in interviews,
sounds like their own ideas about God, not what God breathed out anywhere in
the Scriptures, including those of the New Testament! Which reminds me that the other book, “A More Christlike God” (I
shudder to type such arrogance), challenges even the BJs to assess whether
they are finding in Scripture the god they are looking for, not the one who
is there! And where is this “Jesus’s revelation of the Father”? Are we taking
what Jesus said about the Father? Or what the BJs say Jesus said about the
Father but we can’t find any record that he did? Is this assuming facts that
still have not been put into evidence? Where did Jesus say that his Father
was not just in dealing with sin? Where did Jesus say that what “Yahweh”, or
“the LORD”, or “Adonai” did or said in the Scriptures wasn’t what his Father
would do? And why is it that when Jesus speaks of the condemnation and wrath
that is on everyone who does not believe in him, and it is the Father’s will
for us to believe in his Son, the BJs claim that condemnation does not mean
what the Hebrew Scriptures describe of condemnation, and wrath does not mean
what the Hebrew Scriptures described of Yahweh’s wrath? I’m just sayin’ that
the ones who are pushing their personal religious views on people instead of
teaching “what accords with sound doctrine” seem to be the ones claiming the
greatest offense of people pushing their religious views on people! |
Well,
I see that BJ is beginning a new section, so I will call it a night. I will
conclude by saying that I do not read of God’s justice throughout both the Old
and New Testaments without feeling pangs of grief and heartache (even horror)
at the purity of the holiness of God whose justice is perfect in every way. I
shudder with the thought of still,
following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:1-3).
But I tremble with wonder that,
God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:4-7).
I
simply continue to write my critique with a weight of seriousness that if we
let the peddlers of God’s word twist and distort the teachings of Scripture so
that we are even afraid to say that we took a historical event literally, or
that we think the plain reading of the text favors something different than BJ
wants it too, or that we read one of BJ’s Scriptures in context and discovered
it meant something quite different than what he wrote in his book, then we have
come out from under the authority of the word of God and have put ourselves
under the authority of people who are telling us what we should believe instead
of believing “every word that comes from the mouth of God”. You know, like Adam
and Eve did in the garden!
And
because that is such serious business, I appeal to everyone to let the
Scriptures speak for themselves, praying through them in reliance on the Holy
Spirit, struggling through the parts that trigger us with the horrors of sin
and judgment, and becoming zealous to tell people that God so loved the world
that he gave us his own Son to be the propitiation for our sins so that we
could be delivered out of the domain of darkness and transferred into the
kingdom of God’s beloved Son. But the moment we accept “another Jesus”, or follow
“a different spirit”, or submit to “a different gospel” that, as Paul said, “is
no gospel at all”, we lose everything because the poison-in-the-pudding steals,
kills, and destroys by keeping people from the true Lord Jesus Christ who gives
life, and gives it to the full.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible
Systems
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